Community Council discussion on Hunter design

[Allieddeath-blackrock]

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

If this is what you think, then you did not read what I said. I never argued that players did not often choose SV for the purpose of PvP. Go back and read it again…

Very well. Then do you still find fault with what I wrote below?

If you find the post satisfactory in context of PvP, noting how only the developers can determine when and where game design intention applies, then we can finally wrap things up and go about our business.

Community Council discussion on Hunter design

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

The guy who carried most of the hunter class development from late BC/pre WotLK and onwards, Chris Kaleiki, had also moved away from focusing on core class development, and was instead working on systems design, mostly(not exclusively) surrounding PvP.

Oh, thank goodness he’s gone! This must be the guy who ruined Survival Hunters and retconned our core fantasy with junk talents in WotLK. He was a revisionist, for certain.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

The new(er) designers had no attachments to the core fantasy of the classes, and they approached each class with a different mindset.

These guys, I like. They have a more critical grasp of the underlying archetypes that were present in the Hunter Class since its inception. They’ve finally liberated us from Marksmanships’ constricting grasp.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

First of all, I only posted a few examples. Those are hardly ‘ALL’ spec symbols.

Those examples were clearly ALL THE SYMBOLS

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Secondly, I’m not discrediting a single one of them. I think they’re all perfectly fine for their inteded purpose. I simply don’t agree with the notion that spec/talent category icons have such direct ties to the core design and intentions for the gameplay associated with each category.
Again, they’re mostly just hinting at what can be found within each category. But, as we can see, they certainly weren’t defining representations of what the core design of the category focused on, in terms of combat role or core functions.

“Final Thoughts On Hunter Specialization Icons”

It’s impossible for the playerbase to confirm the purpose of Specialization Icons. As players, we can only infer the meaning of specialization icons–we cannot deterministically define them

Hunters are first and foremost a physical dps class. Ranged, Melee, and even our Pets belong to the school of Physical DPS.

I discovered connecting threads between the Hunter Icons and the school of physical dps provided by each Hunter Specialization.

Do note that the following is laced with conjecture, but it still finds objective parity with the underlying facts.

These immutable facts are:

• [Beast Mastery] Tame Beast: Pets
• [Marksmanship] Ranged Weaponry: Volley
• [Survival] Melee Range: Mongoose Bite

Hunter Classic Talent Calculator - Classic World of Warcraft (wowhead.com)

We enter subjective territory from here on. Note that nothing of value can be gained except riled-up emotions when entering the subjective realm of debate.

Each party will endlessly lean on their stance which produces circular arguments.

Feel free to agree or disagree at your leisure.

[Tame Beast]

Unlocks the physical dps portion of our damage profile conveyed by pets. [Tame Beast] is effectively the root of the BM Specialization and is the point from which all Pet DPS and thus the vast majority of talent value for BM is sourced.

Summary: The BM Icon is the symbolic root of all BM abilities with exception to the Aspects. Representative of Pet DPS.

[Volley]

Although this ability isn’t flashy, it may represent the ultimate expression of Archery which invokes speed and agility to deploy hundreds of arrows in the targeted area.

The icon is also a Bull’s-Eye, that when taken together with the broader Class Icon: The Bow, effectively doubles down on the centrality of MM as a physical Ranged DPS and situates the specialization as the ranged locus for the class.

Summary: The MM icon represents Ranged DPS.

This is based on the fact that [Volley] requires a ranged weapon to actuate, and how [Volley] also deals the highest AoE ranged damage of any ranged ability in the class.

[Mongoose Bite]

[Mongoose Bite] requires the target to be in melee range to actuate, and it also deals Melee DPS. While [Mongoose Bite] requires a dodge to actuate, SV is still a DPS Specialization and not a true tank archetype. [Mongoose Bite] thus transforms a defensive stat in dodge into offensive melee damage.

Summary: The SV icon may represent Melee DPS.

Survival’s intra-specialization damage profile consists of over 90% Melee DPS.

@Ghorak-laughing-skull

Again, this relies on you looking at each talent category in a vacuum, and not as part of a general class fantasy concept. You have to get the whole idea of individual spec fantasies and archetypes out of your head. This wasn’t how they designed classes back then.

Each category simply focused on certain parts of the core class design. Allowing players to focus on the parts they enjoyed. For pure damage classes, and in some way, classes in general, they did not intend for you to create your own sub-class, in terms of fantasy or identity. They have said as much in the early Blizzcon panels. Feel free to check them out for yourself.

Answering this is worthy of another thread in itself. But I will briefly contend that Hunters were never composed of a single, generalized archetype. You lean heavily into this idea as a premise, but I contest that you can’t find a lore figure that carries the complete package of all three specializations at once.

It appears that they pulled inspiriation for each spec from at least three different Hunter-style archetypes from WC3, they being: Rexxar, Sylvanas, and Tyrande – plus a smidge from the Diablo 2 Trap Assassin and Amazon.

Suppose if you delete Marksmanship. What would the Hunter Class be left with without Ranged DPS?

That would leave a remainder of Melee DPS and Pet DPS, which links directly to Rexxar.

Now delete Survival.
You would be left with Tyrande, her Sentinel Owl, and bit of Sylvanas.

Now delete both Beast Mastery and Survival.
You would be left with primarily Tyrande herself without the Owl, but with a few elements of Sylvanas in Silencing Shot.

I contend that Rexxar was always fully present in the class from the beginning, he just got covered up and overshadowed by Tyrande.

It’s tough to pinpoint a WoW-canon archetype for traps so we must look elsewhere. I’ve remarked on how similar Survival’s playstyle was to the Trap Assassin class in the Diablo Universe. She employed Martial Arts, Ranged Abilities, Explosives, and Traps but she also had an Evasion ability.